Glass-Forming Ability Correlated With The Liquid-Liquid Transition In Pd42.5ni42.5p15 Alloy

Alloy melts can solidify into metallic glasses if cooled fast enough to avoid crystallization. Glass-forming ability (GFA), a measure of the ease of vitrification, is vital for the fundamental understanding of glass formation, and is also crucial for the application of metallic glasses. Previous studies of GFA mainly fo-cused on the undercooled liquid phase, while the influence of the evolution of the stable melts on GFA is rarely addressed. Here we show that the Pd42.5Ni42.5P15 glass-forming liquid, in which a first-order liquid liquid transition (LLT) takes place at T-LL = 1063 K high above its liquidus temperature, shows significantly different GFA when quenched from the temperature above or below T-LL. Moreover, the pathway and kinetics of crystallization of the melt are strongly related to the kinetics of the LLT. Our work provides new insights into the vitrification process and the kinetics of crystallization, and contributes to designing more stable metallic glasses. (C) 2020 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.